Teachers’ Perceptions and Expectations of Principal’s Transformational Leadership from

                                                Transformational Leaders

 

Chapter One

Introduction

Chapter one presents the overview of the study. The areas that are addressed in the chapter include; conceptual framework, the research problem, justification and connected literature, significance of the research, description of the key terms and research questions at the end.

Background of the research

The roles of teachers are to ensure that the performance of students increase every year because they are the people in charge of the curriculum and the classroom (Alzoraiki et al., 2018). In order to ensure that the teachers are able to play this role effectively, they require support and motivation which is in most cases affected by the school principles. Teachers are only satisfied with their jobs if they have a good relationship with the principal of their schools, and are involved in the decision making practice at their school (Alzoraiki et al., 2018). Theorists and researchers have in recent years steadily quoted the significance of actual management in schools in regard to ensuring better-quality education results. These in most cases refer principally to the managerial staffs and disregard the existence of other ranks of headship. In the modern day, principals are no longer the solitary leaders in institutions. Leadership is disseminated through the school community with directorial leaders, teachers and policy makers taking on corresponding functions and duties. The accomplishment of a school is reliant on a collective style of leadership; one or even a few proprietors can no longer serve in managing an educational program for an entire school without considerable involvement of other educationalists (Alzoraiki et al., 2018).

Teachers are nowadays being requested to undertake leadership tasks at both the educational and structural levels. These are leaders who are allocated official positions in the already vastly specialized managerial organization of schools. It is important to have a partition of leadership tasks, where supervisors adopt major duty for strategic management, while the teachers take on major responsibilities for educational management (Balwant et al., 2014). All the same, the cumulative expectations that are connected to these innovative responsibilities can be confusing, challenging and devastating to educational leaders, their co-workers and their supervisors. This has led to the teacher leaders falsifying their responsibilities while working.

 New programs that help train educators in the field of educational leadership are emerging in the higher education institutions (Jensen, 2018). Such programs are helping prepare teachers to; foundation revolutionary learning settings, react to restructuring creativities, and transmute their instructive organization through co-operative attitudes. These are educators who are getting equipped for official instructional management functions within the school community. Nothing much has been identified about how they can efficiently guide their associates and the manner in which their style of management vary from their managerial colleagues.

Management style can be described as the method and style that is utilized in guiding, realizing, and inspiring people and plans. Management style has been described as the steady interactive patterns that are displayed by leaders, when they are trying to sway the actions of the other individuals whom they work along with, as they observe them.  Leadership can be described as a model whereby the management style falls into two extensive groupings of effect. One is transformational leadership which is established on the faith that leaders and their associates can elevate one another to advanced heights of enthusiasm as well as decency (Jensen, 2018). The other one is transactional leadership; it is established on the belief that leaders strive to inspire associates by engaging to their personal self-interests (Jensen, 2018). In the recent years, pressure has been increasing on the association between style of management and the values of an institution. This has led to an increased attentiveness in the analysis of how transformational management allows leaders to modify the environment within school societies.

Justification and connected literature

Leadership as discussed by Burn’s model is transfiguring and inspiring (Alzoraiki et al., 2018). Transformational school spearhead follows two central objectives; one is assisting staff to advance and preserve cooperative specialized school philosophy. The second is to nurture teacher growth and also to assist teachers resolve complications more commendably. When a teacher accepts leadership activities as fitting or vital, management will move to the transformational stage of connection, as associates and leaders agree on a mutual vision and commitment of improving educational performance.

Meyes & Gethers, (2018) argues that transformational leadership inspire associates that they work with by encouraging a progressive mutual climate. Transformational leaders do not just respond to environmental conditions; rather they struggle to profile and generate them. Transactional leaders inspire associates through discussions, interchange and predetermined magnitudes. In effective organizations, transformational leadership enhances the outcomes of transactional leadership. In order for school to effectively run, its leadership must include transformational conducts while at the same employing transactional conducts when it is suitable. Alzoraiki et al., (2018) illustrates that despite the fact that there are devastating managerial accountabilities that are overly transactional, principals are anticipated to behave like dreamers for their institutions and the society at large.

Explorative studies focusing on principals have shown that teachers support the school heads who exhibit a more transformational management style. Transformational management performances lead to enhanced educational outcomes (Meyes & Gethers, 2018); (Alzoraiki et al., 2018). Teachers relate to a more open educational setting where principals exhibit transformational traits. Such characters include; founding trusting associations, encouraging input when decisions are being made, offering customized contemplation as well as stimulating the rest of the people to work toward a mutual objective. There are those studies that suggest that the teachers who execute official management duties integrally hold and display much individuality that is related with transformational management (Seibert et al., 2011); (Toom, 2018).

Teachers recognize leader groups as significant in aiding to inspire associates through transformational behaviour. This behaviour includes; nurturing obligation to institutional objectives, offering personalized backing and logical inspiration to educators and having high projections for their peer’s conducts (Alzoraiki et al., 2018). Teachers and principal management groups have diverse functions in the implementation of transformational leadership and in influencing the climate of a school.

The climate of the school administration can be destructively affected when there is discrepancy amid the insight of the teachers in respect to style of management applied by the principal and his or her awareness (Balwant et al., 2014). All the above-mentioned research studies have involved the role of principals, it is however important to study the specific transformational conducts that teacher expects from the principals. It is also important to understand the expected leadership traits that principals should display in relation to their managerial colleagues.

Problem statement

There currently exist numerous research studies that deal with the leadership style employed by principals and the influence that they have on the school environment. Some of the literature describes the way that disparities between the teachers and the opinions of the principal on leadership styles affect the climate of the school (Toom, 2018; Seibert et al., 2011, Vrhovnik et al., 2018, Alzoraiki et al., 2018). There are however, inadequate research studies on management styles adopted by educational frontrunners. And how their style of management varies from those of the principals and how the variances in teacher and principal attitude influence the school climate. The current occurrence of formalized management functions for the teachers, demands exploration in this area to ensure that educational frontrunners define their position in the management arrangement of the institution. This will also help recognize how the functions that they play influence the climate of the institution.

This current study addresses all the above stated complications and aids to add on the present managerial headship literature by exploring educational influencers in association with school principals (Alzoraiki et al., 2018). This research explores how the insight of teachers on management style of the principals and educational leaders relate to their insight of the teacher and the principal behaviour features the school climate.  The research also observes the way that the views of the teachers on principal performance features of school climate, are influenced by the disparity or agreement of self-perception of the transformational style of management for the principals. This study chose to use transformational management as the motivation of this study because there is a very robust association between transformational management and school climate as defined by most of the literature.

Significance

It is very significant for educational leaders to understand how their associates vision them as leaders and how management style affects the climate of an educational institution. Having some knowledge on how educational leaders differ from principals because of the development of the new functions for teacher leaders is significant. This research study will help education management to recognize how teachers identify the management styles of both the principals and other educational leaders and how these insights recount to how they comprehend their collaboration with one another and with the principal. The findings of this study will help middle school leaders to better apprehend the management constructions within school communities and ways to advance them. This research will also help in offering valuable data to faculties at institutions of higher education so that they can advance the training of organizational and educational frontrunners.

Description of terms

Educational leader

            This is a teacher leader who is in a formal position within the school community. The formal management roles that are assumed by the educational leaders are both administration and academic (Seibert et al., 2011). This is a leader who is a significant foundation of educational knowledge as he or she effects syllabus, instruction and general learning. For the purpose of this study, educational leader is that individual who is elected by the principal to execute the following roles; training and mentoring of teachers, building and influencing syllabus knowledge, leading in service training and staff growth accomplishments, providing syllabus and educational resources and engaging the other teachers in cooperative planning, reflection and study.

Administrative leader

This is the individual that directs or manages the school community. The functions of an administrative leader are diverse and they may comprise; vision and scheduling, syllabus, discipline, communication, public relations, professional advancement, budget and capitals and employees matters (Vrhovnik et al., 2018). In this study, the principle is the administrative leader

• The principal is the educationalist in an educational society whose function is to recognize the total edification procedure in the school construction and he or she is accountable for all that transpires in the school (Vrhovnik et al., 2018).

Transformational leader

This is a leader who is able to motivate through a collective vision, classical preferred behaviours, offers personalized support and is able to nurture academic motivation (Vrhovnik et al., 2018).

Transactional leader

This is a leader that inspires other individuals through liable rewards, attentions on enthusiastically setting values and observers for the existence of errors (Vrhovnik et al., 2018).

Passive leaders

This is a leader who eludes accepting responsibilities, is always preoccupied when required and repels uttering his or her opinions on significant subjects. (Vrhovnik et al., 2018)

Type of agreement

This is categorized into four groups; the first one is high-high, this is where the opinion of transformational management style is high, and the opinion of the teacher’s opinion of the leader’s transformational management style is high. The second one is high-low; this is where the leader’s opinion of transformational management style is high, while the teacher’s perception of leader’s transformational management style is low. The third one is low-high, this is where the leader’s opinion of transformational management style is low, and the teacher’s opinion of the leader’s transformational management style is high. The fourth one is low-low, this is where the opinion of transformational management style is low, and the teacher’s opinion of the leader’s transformational management style is low.

School climate

This is the opinions of the teachers in regard to the work place or the set of core features that differentiates one educational institution from another and inspirations the actions of its members ((Toom, 2018). Climate of an educational institutions falls within a scale extending from closed to open and it is evaluated through two over-all scopes on the organizational climate description questionnaire (OCDQ). This includes; teacher performance and principal performance ((Toom, 2018).

• Teacher performance; this is the mean score of the collegial, committed and disengaged sub-scale behaviour from OCDQ. These three characteristics of teacher behaviour, define the teacher openness behaviour that is characterized by low disengagement, high commitment and high collegial relations ((Toom, 2018).
• Principal performance; this is the mean score of the supportive, directive and restrictive subscale behaviours from the OCDQ. These three characteristics of principal behaviour define the principal openness behaviour, which is characterized by high supportiveness, low directiveness and low restrictiveness ((Toom, 2018).

Perception or opinion

This defines the acquaintance, understanding or perception extended through indulgence.

School improvement

Defines the methodical, constant determination intended at altering learning situations in schools with the eventual resolution of realizing educational objectives more efficiently ((Toom, 2018).

    Research Questions

There are several research questions that were formulated to help guide this research study. They include;

RQ1: How do middle school teachers identify with the transformation leadership behaviours of the principal and how do they meet the teachers’ expectations of a transformational leader?

 

RQ2: How do middle school teachers identify with the principal’s competence and how does it meet the teachers’ expectations of a transformational leader?

 

RQ3: How do middle school teachers identify with the principal’s self-determination and how does it meet the teachers’ expectations of a transformational leader?

 

RQ4: How do middle school teachers identify with the principal’s meaning of values and standards and how do they meet teachers’ expectations of a transformational leader?

 

RQ5: How do middle school teachers identify with the principal’s impact on making a difference in the managerial process and how do they meet the teachers’ expectations of a transformational leader?

 

 

 

 

References

Alzoraiki, M., Ab. Rahman, O. B., &Mutalib, M. A. (2018). The Effect of the Dimensions of Transformational Leadership on the Teachers' Performance in the Yemeni Public Schools.European Scientific Journal, 14(25). doi:10.19044/esj.2018.v14n25p322

Balwant, P. T., Birdi, K., & Stephan, U. (2014). Practice What You Preach: Instructors as Transformational Leaders in Higher Education Classrooms. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2014(1), 1685–1690. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2014.57

Jensen, U. T. (2018). Does Perceived Societal Impact Moderate the Effect of Transformational Leadership on Value Congruence? Evidence from a Field Experiment. Public Administration Review, 78(1), 48–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12852

Meyes E., & Gethers K. (2018). Transformational Leadership: Creating a Culture of Learning Age of Accountability. Journal of Scholarship &Practice (Fall 2018), 15.3.

Seibert, S., Wang, G., & Courtright, S. (2011). Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(5), 981-1003.

Toom, A. (2018). School culture, leadership and relationships matter. Teachers and Teaching, 24(7), 745-748. doi:10.1080/13540602.2018.1503855

Vrhovnik, T., Marič, M., Žnidaršič, J., & Jordan, G. (2018). The Influence of Teachers’ Perceptions of School Leaders’ Empowering Behaviours on the Dimensions of Psychological Empowerment. Organizacija, 51(2), 112-120. doi:10.2478/orga-2018-0009